Frayed Knot

Y'know, it's nice to get two extra runs and all. But, geez, it was 2nd & 3rd with no one out and yet they managed to squeeze out those two runs via: K, IBB, nonI-BB, Sac Fly, IF Pop-up iow: no hits and only [u:150ozsop]one[/u:150ozsop] ball left the infield I mean would it kill ya to bust out a big inning every now and then? And even the Sac Fly was only semi-deep and a better RF arm maybe doesn't score that 2nd run at all. We're getting to be the old cliche where an offensive rally is described as having a 3-0 count. And in this case it was a 3-0 count to the pitcher.

McNeil looks to be a quick 'tagger' (small sample size warning), a guy who'll slap it down quickly and maybe steal an extra out here or there. The throw wasn't going to get Hamilton on his steal of 2nd but McNeil made it close and that's not the only one I've seen since his call-up. I don't recall a NYM middle infielder like that recently -- certainly not Murphy, nor Flores, and not particularly Asdrubal either -- and maybe not since Ordonez who I swore would steal an out per week in his day just from sleight of hand (prolly an exaggeration but you get the idea).

FLA/MIA = Castillo, Stanton and Stanton Conine is 3rd in RBI behind Stanton & Mike Lowell

In honor of it being Eight Eight Eighteen, today's game is being carried by ESPN8 - aka: 'The Ocho'

So Tuesday night, the Red Sox got shut down for 7 innings by Toronto starter Marcus Stroman [1 R, 2 H], got only 4.2 out of their own starter Pomeranz, needed 7 hurlers to finish the game, got a blown save opp out of Kimbrel, and got out-hit 13-9 for the game. Eh, no problem, they'll just score 4 in the 8th then 5 more in the 10th so that, even though the Jays scored in every inning (5 runs total) from the 7th thru the 10th innings, the Sox won going away (10-7) for their [u:2i014r1y]80th[/u:2i014r1y] win of the year against 34 losses. They're currently on a pace for 114 wins.

There were six answers (in addition to Zimmerman who makes it seven) and Gonzalez & Musial rounded out the six, so please hold all future calls. HANK AARON - BRAVES TODD HELTON - ROCKIES GEORGE BRETT - ROYALS CAL RIPKEN JR. - ORIOLES LUIS GONZALEZ - DIAMONDBACKS STAN MUSIAL - CARDINALS Although for the record, Thomas does hold the ChiSox record from HR & RBI but Luke Appling is their leading hit maker (Thomas is 4th behind also Nellie Fox and Paul Konerko).

HANK AARON - BRAVES TODD HELTON - ROCKIES GEORGE BRETT - ROYALS CAL RIPKEN JR. - ORIOLES LUIS GONZALEZ - DIAMONDBACKS STAN MUSIAL - CARDINALS That breath Luis Gonzalez feels on the back of his neck is that of Paul Goldscmidt who currently sits 24 HR and 86 RBIs behind him in Arizona lore. And no one comes that close without passing them ... unless they simultaneously come down with spinal stenosis, a shredded shoulder, Lupus, Hand/foot/mouth disease, gout, and whatever else Wright has contracted recently. Albert Pujols left the Cardinals 30 HRs shy of Musial's mark. =#FF0000]STAUB BANKS LONGORIA MAYS YASTREMSKI TED WILLIAMS EDGAR MARTINEZ GARY CARTER Two teams/players remain

MFS62 wrote: (Didn't think this deserved its own thread, and this is the most general baseball one I could find) Later Or you could, y'know, start a TWiB Notes thread for this week!!

Seeing as how it's already been established that Ryan Zimmerman holds the Montreal/Washington record in all three categories, you would do well to stop guessing ex Ex Pos And while Edgar does have more RBIs for Seattle than anyone else, Mister Suzuki leads in hits (by 295 over Edgar) and Mr. Griffey is well ahead in HR. AARON HELTON BRETT RIPKEN =#FF0000]STAUB BANKS LONGORIA MAYS YASTREMSKI TED WILLIAMS EDGAR MARTINEZ GARY CARTER Two teams/players remain

Yaz holds the Boston marks for both hits (by a LOT, Ted both walked and flew planes too often) & RBI (by just FIVE!) but Ted leads the HR race 521-475 AARON HELTON BRETT RIPKEN =#FF0000]STAUB BANKS LONGORIA MAYS YASTREMSKI TED WILLIAMS Two teams/players remain

Neither Banks nor Longoria is correct. While Longoria does hold both TB's HR & RBI marks, he was just nine hits short of Carl Crawford when he was dealt from the Rays last winter. Banks holds none of the three records for the Cubs, sitting behind Cap Anson in career hits & RBIs and in back of Slammin' Sammy Sosa in HR AARON HELTON BRETT RIPKEN =#FF0000]STAUB BANKS LONGORIA MAYS YASTREMSKI Ripken is correct for the Browns/Orioles

SteveJRogers wrote: Yaz in Boston? Not as long as Teddy Ballgame (or at least his frozen head) still haunts the hallways of Fenway Park he isn't.

MFS62 wrote: Rusty Staub Later Not sure which franchise you're aiming at here, but it doesn't matter since he's not an answer for any of them. Rusty played for five different orgs but none for particularly long which makes him an unlikely candidate for this type of answer.

Aaron is correct, as are Brett & Helton (when in doubt, go for newer franchises) but Mays is NOT. Willie left the Giants [u:35qbyqmt]One RBI short[/u:35qbyqmt] of Mel Ott's team record!!

I think most here know that David Wright sits just 10 HRs short of the NYM career record and that he already holds many of the team records including most hits and most RBIs. And just this past week, Wright's fellow SE Virginian Ryan Zimmerman passed Tim Wallach as the all-time hits leader for the Montreal/Washington franchise, a feat which makes Zimmerman one of [u:2wys2kpv]seven players to hold a franchise's career mark in Hits, HRs, and RBI[/u:2wys2kpv] Who are the other six?

You see winning DIVISIONS as important. But a division is an arbitrary collection of teams, and often four of them are shitty and the one remaining emerges as "the best." Which is why larger divisions are better than smaller and why I cringe every time someone wants to "fix" MLB by expanding to 32 teams and then dividing them into eight four-team divisions. But if you're going to advocate for a system that ignores division winners then I think you just need to get rid of the divisions. Right now they serve to promote regional rivalries and make some form of sanity out of scheduling and travel. Scrapping that leaves you with a single 15-team league which plays all year to determine the best team only, assuming we're going with the five teams off the top model, to follow it with a series of short series which purports to then determine who's really the best, larger sample size be damned. At least the current system determines different winners of different sub-prizes even if, in some years, some are more equal than others. The problem is that American sports is kind of caught in the middle: EPL during the season followed by a kind of FA Cup at the end. You could advocate going back to a WS-only format as existed for nearly seven decades but no one is going to try and stuff that genie back into the bottle even if there weren't twice as many team as there used to be.

Five innings / two hits (fortunately they were in a row) I've seen this movie before and I don't like how it ends.

So we've found what stops an opposing team rally while Jason Vargas is on the mound ... a violent act of god.

Sal Romano is out of Syosset (of course he is) but later went to HS in Southington, CT where he was a 23rd round draft pick of the Reds in 2011 But despite an 11-17 / 4.86 / 1.44 record in 37 starts since his ML debut last April, he's never lost to the Mets in three starts (Reds have won all three games) with a combined 6 runs and 0 HRs allowed in 17 IP On May 9th of this year Romano threw 6 innings [1 R, 4 H, 7 K] in a game eventually won by the Reds 2-1 via a 10th inning Adam Duvall (now w/Atlanta) walk-off HR off of AJ Ramos (remember him?) dropping the NYM record to 18-17 after the hot start.

Sure [responding to smg58] but of course that's an expense above and beyond the 150-whatever million $ salary cost and those policies vary on what they cover and how much they reimburse. And still the larger point: that signing a 30 y/o speed guy to a 7/8 year top-dollar contract is rarely a good idea even if you're NOT just doing it to screw your rival, and especially so when it involves a player with as many missed/partial seasons on his resume during his twenties [18 games played in 2010; 73 in 2012] as good seasons [oWAR = 7.5 & 4.2 in 2011 & 2013].

Signing a guy for the sole purpose of keeping him away from a rival is a really bad idea. Spending $150 million or so for that reason simply makes it worse.

Ellsbury, btw, has not played the entire season but is just NOW having the surgery which will keep him out for the rest of the year and maybe into next. Not that it matters really as the Yanx are at least as good without him and maybe better. They've gotten much more out of Hicks so I suspect they neither care a whit nor give a shit. The next two years, however, are a problem. I would have guessed that this was his final year but, Noooooo, only the 5th of 7 (plus the option) as it turns out. Turns out that $153 million just doesn't but what it used to. That's something I've noticed on my own when shopping at Target. I used to be able to get a lot of stuff for that kind of scratch but, these days, not so much.

Rosario looks like he's never even witnessed a bunt before much less performed one.

Not that the bloop is the reason, but I'm not quite sure why Mickey saw the need for the Wahl/Gsellman switch. In all, it was just disappointing to only get 6-1/3 of of Syndy tonight.

Before this (4th) inning started, I was starting to wonder whether this was going to be one of those games where we score early and then spend the next 8 frames trying to stave off challenges to that lead. But now 5-Zip smells a lot better than 3-Zip